Yoga Cushions – How to choose the right cushion

Why do we need cushions?

While you are practicing meditation or pranayama, sitting in cross legged position is recommended position. The difficult part is that sitting in such position isn’t easy for everyone. This is especially true when you are new to practice of yoga. Yoga cushions are there to help, if sitting cross legged is difficult on its own.

A stable sitting is one with your knees are close to mat. When knees are high, then it is difficult to keep your back straight. So, when we sit on cushions, it raises our hips, thus allowing our knees to come down. This leads to better sitting posture.

I have personally used both style for brief period (as I am able to sit comfortably on mat without any help), so I am also including feedback given to me by regular users of these cushions.

Let’s see what each type of cushion has to offer

Filling based cushions: Due to flexibility of material inside the cushion, these cushions have main benefit to adapt according to your comfort. You can try sitting on edges of cushion or in middle, to see, which position provides you stable posture. As the inner material gets settled according to your body, it’s easy to find suitable angle to sit. Also when you sit on edge, slowly you can reduce the height of cushion support that you want to use.

But main problem with these cushions is that, you have to settle them into what you want, every time. There is nothing static. You get up, lift it up and it’s round again. Other then this, it serves it’s purpose very well.

Rubber block based or fixed height cushions: These are fixed cushions. No adjustment required. No guessing. You will either get it right or you won’t. But main benefit is that if this one suits you, then just like your mat, it is there with same experience every time.

Main point that needs to be taken care of while purchasing this type of cushions is that you sit on one for sometime, with different cross legged positions (sukhasana, padmasana, ardha padmasana etc.)

That’s all there to cushions. Please share your feedback in comment section below, to give your review about cushions or sitting supports that you have experienced.